Renault can improve – Hopefully

Unfortunately for French manufacturer Renault they have been unable to take their form from the end of 2016 into 2017.

The introduction of the V6 Turbo-Hybrid era has really caught Renault out, but towards the end of the 2016 Formula One World Championship season they appeared to be getting their act together.

Their performance enabled Red Bull Racing to leapfrog Ferrari into becoming the best of the rest last season and there had been hopes that season could prove to be even better, not only for Red Bull Racing, but also for the main manufacturing team Renault.

But so far in winter testing that has not proved to be the case with Renault being outperformed by power-unit rivals Mercedes and Ferrari.

The team itself has also suffered ERS issues.

‘I don’t think we matched our expectations [during winter testing]. We discovered a few things that are not as we would like them to be, So this is how it is. Now we have to work hard to improve and get into the right direction. Nico Hulkenberg told motorsport.com.

Hulkenberg opted to leave Force India for the project at Renault during the final stages of last season, shortly after Sergio Perez, his then team-mate actually opted against joining Renault to remain at Force India.

‘We would have liked to do a bit more set-up tests, which we couldn’t do as we were lacking time due to reliability issues. So we couldn’t do everything we would have liked.

‘We still have potential to go faster. And we still have plenty of work to do on the car. But the year is long. So I hope we can improve.’